Symbol and satire in the French Revolution . hlies on an anvil. On the very day of the attack onthe fortress a committee had been appointed toformulate the rights of man—his fundamental,inalienable rights—^and this was to serve as a pre-amble to the whole. Already on July nth Lafayette had handed in adraft of rights,* reminiscent of the Americanconstitution, that would have answered very wellfor every practical purpose. They included libertyof person, speech, and opinion, the right to onesown property, the right to be happy and to resistoppression. But instead of adopting this bodilyand procee
Symbol and satire in the French Revolution . hlies on an anvil. On the very day of the attack onthe fortress a committee had been appointed toformulate the rights of man—his fundamental,inalienable rights—^and this was to serve as a pre-amble to the whole. Already on July nth Lafayette had handed in adraft of rights,* reminiscent of the Americanconstitution, that would have answered very wellfor every practical purpose. They included libertyof person, speech, and opinion, the right to onesown property, the right to be happy and to resistoppression. But instead of adopting this bodilyand proceeding to take up the evils that were cry-ing aloud for remedy, these twelve hundred mendebated hour after hour and week after week onpurely theoretical matters. Ignorance of theserights of man, it was argued, had kept the French Plate 33, p. 74 ^ Buchez et Roux, ii., 78. 73 74 The French Revolution under the heel of despotism; the programme mustfirst be laid down before any individual measureswere discussed. In vain Dumouriez, the future. lot tot Lot aatlc-7 cliaua - tot }ot iSt boa Ccun-a-i^c u TMit Liioir cjid/ii louinuie. Plate 33. A cartoon showing the three estates forging away at the new constitution. victor of Valmy and Genappe, declared that whatFrenchmen needed was a knowledge of their dutiesrather than of their rights; in vain he pleaded thatthis was the plan on which the much-admiredAmericans had proceeded. Memoires (Hamburg, 1795), ii., 24. Equality 75 Triumphantly at last the world was told thatall men are equal before the law; that libertyconsists in doing whatever does not harm others;that no one may be punished save by a lawestablished and promulgated previously to thecrime; that every man is to be presumed in-nocent until he has been declared guilty; thatno one is to be molested on account of hisopinions. These—and there were many more—^were laid down as those rights of man ig-norance, forget fulness, or scorn of which are thesole causes of public misfor
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